Simon Cowell is taking his show on the road. The TV impresario will bring the X Factor talent show to Las Vegas in a global pay-per-view Internet venture, according to a report in the UK version of January’s GQ magazine.
Cowell and British retail billionaire Philip Green are in negotiations with a major hotel-casino venue in Sin City to find a permanent home for a new version of the show.
“The plan is to take it to Vegas…We’ll have a permanent place. The home of X Factor — live from Vegas,” Green told GQ.
Cowell and Green said the idea is to stage two talent shows a week in Vegas and broadcast them over the Internet on a pay-per-view basis.
Green, who owns the Arcadia Group, told GQ, “It’ll all be online. You have 20, 30, 40 million people tuning in twice a week…You bring two or three hundred million viewers to a venue. It’s turning it up a peg.” He further noted that there will be an online store as well.
Further down the line, the plan would be to stage X Factor competitions in countries around the world. Cowell said he got the idea for the new venture after Susan Boyle became a global sensation following her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent.
